Additional information
by Michael Röthlin (Author)
On the one hand, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems promise to provide "all-in-one" application functionality to support business processes and to cover all the information needs of a wide range of organizations, from the operational to the executive levels. On the other hand, despite their success in the marketplace, ERP systems are exposed to a range of risks which endanger the quality of the data they process. In this research, the author assesses ERP design and implementation principles in light of data quality concerns, presents evidence from the field of daily ERP practice, and provides guidelines on how organizations can best handle data quality by integrating data quality considerations into existing ERP system implementation and business management models. The usage of general purpose data quality "add-ons" such as address edit controls is discussed in the context of ERP systems, and the role of dedicated master data management extensions - handling data exchange between business partners - is reviewed. Successful data quality management in an ERP context requires awareness, robust process design, and preventive measures. As the author shows, proven concepts described in the data management and (data) quality literature can be - and need to be - applied to the context of ERP systems, in order to fully exploit their potential.
Author Biography
Michael Röthlin was born in 1966. After studies in Electrical Engineering (MSc) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and in Economics (MBA) at the University of Lausanne, he worked in various positions in the industry. In 1999, he joined the Information Engineering Group of the Institute of Information Systems at the University of Bern, directed by Prof. Dr. Gerhard F. Knolmayer. In the context of his activities at the Institute, the author carried out the research project leading to this publication and was awarded a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Bern in 2009. Since 2004, Michael Röthlin has been acting as a professor of Information Systems at the School of Engineering and Information Technology at the Bern University of Applied Sciences.
